Saturday, August 30, 2008

I'll Have A Steak...But Make Sure a Cow Didn't Die For It

Last night while Sunny was at work, I found myself watching a documentary on Animal Planet. Part of this documentary covered a major protest outside an animal shelter.

Apparently, this was one of the many shelters that puts animals down if they’re not adopted within a certain time period, and the protesters were not happy about that. They were holding signs that called the shelter’s staff anything from murderers to Nazis.

I watched in disgust. For me, people like these protesters represent a large portion of what is wrong with the world today.

Don’t get me wrong, I love animals (the fact I’ve taken in no less than five strays over the past four years proves that)…but I understand the concept of a necessary evil.

It’s easy to stand outside an animal shelter and shout slogans about how evil it is to put perfectly healthy animals down…but it’s another matter completely to come up with a workable alternative.

Think about that for a moment. What’s the alternative? Just turn all the animals loose? If we did that, these same protesters would be outside government offices demanding that ‘something be done’ about the packs of feral dogs roaming the streets. It’s just not possible to house every stray animal for its full life-span.

The thing that honestly makes me sick is that these same people comparing this animal shelter to Auschwitz would all find somewhere else to be if the Animal Shelter people stepped outside and told the protesters that if they were so concerned with these animal’s safety, they could save most of them if they all adopted one.

Basically, a lot more animals could be saved if, instead of standing outside the shelter and calling the staff the Third Reich, these protesters adopted some of the animals, or put their hands in their pockets and donated some money to help the shelter build a bigger facility where the animals could be kept for longer.

Long story short, the argument basically comes down to this:

“Killing animals is wrong and we demand you stop it immediately!”

“We hate killing animals as much as you do and we’d stop if we could, but there’s no viable alternative. If you could come up with something else we could do with all these strays, we’d be happy to hear it.”

“Quiet, you puppy-killing Nazi!”

That’s our biggest problem right now. We know what we want, and the fact it might be impossible or have unpleasant side-effects is someone else’s problem.

We want more police on the streets, better schools, better roads and more public services…but we don’t want to pay higher taxes to pay for them. We want our safety guaranteed during air travel, but we don’t want the searches, baggage restrictions or delays that comes with increased security measures. Everyone wants ‘green’ electricity production, but no-one wants to live near ‘eye-sore’ wind-farms.

Long story short, we’ve become a society that demands omelets while protesting against breaking eggs.

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Who writes this crap?

Moved from The UK to the USA to be with my beautiful wife. Been here for over six years, and still complaining about the heat. My hobbies include being angry, opinionated and saying "You know what pisses me off?" I also enjoy writing and trying to be funny.
I also did the voice for the Ninja Crab on 'Finding Nemo'